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Tuesday, March 19, 2013

There's a chipmunk in our house

Liam's been chewing on everything like a little chipmunk these days. He chews on his toys, the furniture, clothes and paper. If he can fit it in his mouth, he chews on it.

Including his crib.

For the past couple of months we've come into his bedroom in the morning and he's standing up, chewing on the side of the crib!

His crib does not have one of those plastic protectors on the top, so there are large areas of white paint missing from the inside of the crib. I hate to admit it, but he's been eating a bit of paint. Not cool.

I brainstormed on how to deter him from chewing on the crib and an idea popped into my head! You know those fleece blankets that people make all of the time, where two different pieces of fabric are tied together around the edge of the blanket? Well, I thought to myself, what if I buy a long piece of fleece and then tie it around the top of the crib?

Liam and I took a trip to Jo Ann Fabrics and bought a strip of brown fleece. I draped the fabric over the long side of the crib and then cut out squares so I could tie the fabric into bows between the rungs.

It worked!

He still chews and sucks on the fabric, but at least he's not consuming little bits of white paint :)

And the brown fabric matches really well with the retro brown/green/blue bed skirt that my grandma made for me.


No more teeth marks
Mission accomplished
_____________________________________

I forgot to post my Daily Smiles from last week...

DAILY SMILES
Things that made me smile two weeks ago:

3.4.13
I spent time with my niece in the morning

3.5.13
I made progress on my artwork

3.6.13
I had fun looking at Matt's baby photos

3.7.13
Liam and I watched my mom bowl

3.8.13
I had fun pinning things on Pinterest (I'm addicted!)

3.9.13
We rented the last Twilight movie and drank screwdrivers

3.10.13
I had time to do some reading



DAILY SMILES
Things that made me smile last week:

3.11.13
I enjoyed reading about Sheboygan's history

3.12.13
Liam took four steps in a row!

3.13.13
I had an hour to myself outside of our house, I went to Target and the library

3.14.13
Liam and I listened to the ice and waves crashing on the shore of Lake Michigan

3.15.13
We made an Irish meal in the slow cooker

3.16.13
We celebrated Beth's birthday

3.17.13
We visited Matt's grandma in the nursing home

Friday, March 15, 2013

Tastes like dirty paper

Paint chips, paint chips, and more paint chips....


This giant basket of paint chips is the culmination of a) painting every interior room in our home over the last three years and b) never being able to make up my dang mind as to what colors to use.

Thank you to the paint departments at Sherwin Williams, Home Depot, Menards and Fleet Farm for supplying me with a lifetime supply of color samples.

And today you helped keep Liam busy for over an hour!

Liam loves playing with these little pieces of color! He inspects each and every color. Then he looks at the size of each chip. He throws them around. Stacks them. Chews on them. Takes them out of the basket and puts them back in.



He even tries to taste some of them.

It's funny to see his expression when he realizes that 'Glazed Pecan' really just tastes like dirty paper.



I love his chubby little foot in this photo :)

And after he demolished the basket of paint chips, he moved on to the next thing...

Pulling every single piece of paper out of our paper-recycling-bag.

Little stinker!
Have a nice weekend everyone.

Monday, March 11, 2013

No TV Tuesdays

I rarely watch TV during the day. Occasionally I'll watch fifteen minutes of Sesame Street or Clifford the Big Red Dog with Liam. And sometimes I'll catch a bit of something on MSNBC or E! while Liam is napping.

I'm more of a music girl during the day. I'll play iTunes or Pandora or the music channels through our cable. Or I'll pop some vinyl onto our record player. Liam and I like to dance around the house a lot.

Night time is a different story.

By the time we get Liam to bed, usually around 8 pm, it's already dark outside and we're so wiped out from the day. The TV and couch just call our names...."Erin...Matt...you know you just want to plop your butts down instead of exercise or read books."

This is what our TV schedule looks like during the week:

Sunday - The Walking Dead
Monday - The Bachelor and Castle
Tuesday - usually something on the Food Network or E!
Wednesday - American Idol
Thursday - Scandal
Friday - (I record Fashion Police and watch it while nursing Liam sometime the following week)
Saturday - we often rent a movie on Saturday nights

It's creepy, but we're obsessed with The Walking Dead...
...and we LOVE Scandal on Thursday nights!
How hot is this photo?

I'm not proud that we watch TV pretty much every night. But I guess because we really only watch ONE show per night, that's not too bad, right?

The shows that we do watch we LOVE. I would not be wasting my time on something I didn't think was worth it.

But in an attempt to 1) do something other than watch TV after Liam is asleep 2)  start crossing things of my DIY/craft list and 3) make more time for romance during the week (ooh la la), I've declared Tuesday evenings in the Bremser house as "No TV Tuesdays."

No TV Tuesdays.

Oh my gosh, we are going to get SO much done!

Starting tomorrow night I'm going to help Matt rearrange/clean/organize his man cave in the basement. There is plenty of shop-vaccing, tool organizing and cabinet installing to be done.

Now if only we have the energy, and the discipline to stay away from the couch and TV :)

We'll see how it goes...

Monday, March 4, 2013

Plop. Plop. Plop.

We are so thankful for the toys and books and clothes that Liam received last weekend at his birthday party. So this weekend we worked on the thank yous that we'll send to our families in the mail.

I know that Liam is really young yet and has no clue that we're sending out thank yous, but I still thought it'd be cool to involve him in the process. They're never too young to learn about appreciation, right?

We have a huge pack of blank note cards that we've been using for thank yous, birthday cards, etc. for the past couple of years. They work great for any kind of note or card because you can decorate the front of them any way you want.

I taped them all to Liam's little art table so he had a clean canvass to color on. Then I gave him a bunch of his washable crayons and he went to town.

Liam loving the BOX to his new crayons.

Testing them out.

Progress! Oh wait....he found the hole in the middle of the table...

He colored for a while, with some help from his mom. Then he discovered a hole in the middle of the table. Hi attention immediately switched to the hole. Each crayon, one by one, was dropped through the hole and onto the ground beneath the table. Then he would crawl under the table, pick up the crayons, and plop them, one by one, into the hole again! 

Plop. Plop. Plop. 

Okay...back to coloring. Almost done.

The finished product.

What a little artist we have on our hands already. His mama is pretty proud :)


So...last night Matt and I went to see the Pentatonix at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee. They're an extremely talented, instrument-free a cappella group. They won season 3 on the TV show the Sing Off. I need to promote them a little bit because I just think they're so good. Here's a link to their music. Please check them out:


A photo from last night


DAILY SMILES
Things that made me smile this week:

2.25.13
I got to take a nice nap during the day

2.26.13
Matt made his famous potato-leek soup for dinner

2.27.13
I got some good exercise shoveling snow

2.28.13
We enjoyed the beautiful snow-covered scenery outside

3.1.13
Liam's face lit up when Matt got home from a two-night work trip

3.2.13
We went to our local winter farmers' market

3.3.13
I got to go on a date with Matt - dinner and a concert!